Intelligent Flux - Octopus forcing discharge outside Peak period - At what rate?

3 comments started 2024-04-13 last 2024-04-15
GivEnergy ProductsAC Coupled
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#1 Rogerbu

I am now on Octopus Intelligent Flux with 7.5kW PV AC3 & 2x9.5kWh batteries.
During the peak tariff Octopus discharged my batteries at 1.6kW instead of the max 3.0kW - so I failed to maximise export returns!!

To rub salt in the wound. Octopus are now forcing discharging at 3.0kW from 19:15 to now (20:45). Can I assume that this Octopus forced Off Peak discharge will be at the Peak Tariff Rate?

I know that import and export rates are the same, but I am paying for the inverter losses in both directions.

The same thing happens every evening. With Inverter losses I am paying Octopus to allow them to use my battery.

I suspect it would pay me to switch off one of the batteries to limit this behaviour.

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#2 TimHutchings

This is the main reason I decided not to use the IOF tariff. My battery charge and discharge costs are around a 20% loss. The only advantage of IOF is the solar export rate which is higher than Flux during the daytime, but the loss of a cheap charge rate 2-5am possibly compensates for that. Guess it depends on your solar array size and you battery storage capacity vs your consumption.

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#3 Toki

I had the same when I switched over just over a week ago. It sorted itself out after a couple of days and exporting at full 2.6kWh on my gen1 battery for the full 3 hours.

My main bugbear with it now is that it exports to grid all solar up to 10:30am (I think, may be 10 or 11, need to check today), before it switches to charge from solar + grid at 1.5kWh limit per hour. Then changes max % each hour. 72% from 1-2pm then 86% from 2-3pm. 93% to 3:30pm and 99% to 4pm for example.

I'd rather it charged fully from solar when available in the morning, then only use grid in the afternoon if there hasn't been enough solar. Otherwise, like yesterday, I ended up with 12.9kWh of solar generation but used 2.23kWh charging the battery from the grid, meaning having AC-DC-AC losses compared to only DC-AC losses from solar.